How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(17)

I glanced at the camera which was still trained on the other dolphins. I took a gamble that whoever was on duty in security that night wouldn’t notice them acting a bit weird and walked over to Kai’s tank. His big, blue eye stared at me warily as I tiptoed to the edge of the pool.

Of course, the other dolphins noticed my return.

“Hey, the girl’s back!”

“The one from last night!”

“I think she likes Kai.”

“I’m worried about him,” I told the other dolphins, knowing that I could communicate with them in whatever language I’d been speaking in the night before. The mouth movements were different, and I could feel it in my throat, although I heard it as clear I would in English.

They all stopped, stunned that I had responded.

“Dude, she talked to us.”

“In Mermish.”

“Think we could get her to give us some fish? Or play with us?”

Mermish. That was the language I was speaking. I tucked that away in the back of my mind for later. “How come I can understand you guys now when I couldn’t earlier today?”

This seemed to perplex the dolphins.

“I dunno?”

“Maybe you weren’t listening?”

I had been trying to listen. Then again, maybe whatever transformation was taking place came in waves, and I had simply been unable to at that point in time. So many questions and not enough answers.

I knelt next to Kai’s pool. “H-hey?” I hesitated, willing myself to have more strength in my voice. “Hey, Kai, it’s me, Tara. Remember me?”

The young dolphin studied me, not moving a muscle. The light breeze on the water made him bob up and down slightly, the only movement in the pool. I got the feeling that he was taking everything in, making sure that I wasn’t a threat to him.

“I was here last night. When Finn came to save you.”

“Yes, Finn!” a dolphin hooted behind me. “Finn was here to save you. He saved the girl too!”

I almost thought that Kai had ignored me once again, yet I saw his eye widen perceptibly. He had recognized Finn’s name too. I latched onto that.

“I think Finn had to stop your rescue mission in order to save me.”

I stopped my nervous stream of consciousness as Kai’s voice filled my head, and instead of the scared, whimpering tone I’d heard earlier, it was now relieved. “I’m glad you’re better.”

The other dolphins had stopped clicking, sticking their heads out of the water and seeing Kai and I talk to each other with intent expressions on their bottle-nosed faces.

“I am,” I said genuinely.

“I told him to take care of you first,” Kai said. “You were hurt real bad.” His eye rolled once and he shifted his bulk to avoid hitting the side of the pool. “I didn’t want you to drown.”

This little dolphin being concerned about my wellbeing touched me. “Why did you ask him to save me?” I asked. I didn’t add the other part of my question, which was, Why did you have him save me when he was so close to saving you?

“Because you were hurt.” He said it so matter-of-factly too. “I didn’t want you to die.”

Had I been that close to dying that a baby dolphin recognized it? A chill went down my spine and I shuddered inwardly. “Thank you,” I said. “I owe you big time.”

I could have sworn that the corners of the dolphin’s mouth turned upwards in a smile. It was the first time I saw any other emotion coming from him other than sadness. I didn’t even know that dolphins could smile.

I felt bad for asking for his help when he was so distraught. “If it’s all right, I wanted to ask for your help again tonight.”

“Yes?”

I took a deep breath. “When Finn saved me, he took me to a sea witch. Nereia. She helped put my head back together, but I think she also did something else to me.”

The dolphin didn’t answer. I realized that he was waiting for me to explain further, so I tilted my head back and I pointed to the gills. “I think she’s turning me into a mermaid.”

I thought that would excite the other dolphins, though it surprisingly didn’t. I glanced back at them, and they were still watching me, hanging on my every word.

I turned back to Kai. His eye regarded me for a moment before giving me a single nod. “Good.”

“No, that’s not good, Kai,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a human. I need to be able to live on the land. I don’t need to worry about breathing underwater.”

“But the ocean is so nice! You can do whatever you want in the ocean. Why would you want to stay on land? You’ve been given a gift.”

Yes, I could consider it a gift. I’d wanted to be a mermaid all my life. Now that it was happening, I didn’t want it to be. I was human. That underwater world was unknown, scary. I didn’t really want to be a...a...what was it that Nereia had said? Merwalker.

“The sea witch called me a merwalker,” I said. “Do you know what that is?”

The other dolphins went crazy, clicking their answers, incoherent in their elation. Kai just stared at me wide-eyed.

“You do know what that is,” I said, frowning.

“It’s a fairytale,” Kai said in awe. “I thought they weren’t real.”